Here's one from John Paczkowski of the San Jose Mercury:
"A study published Monday confirms what anyone who isn't somehow affiliated with the Recording Industry Association of America has long known: File sharing is not the major cause of declining music sales over the past few years. According to the study -- which tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, comparing data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs being downloaded -- the overall impact of file sharing on sales was almost imperceptible:
"File sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study's authors wrote. "Moreover, the estimates are of rather modest size when compared to the drastic reduction in sales in the music industry. At most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction of this decline." You see, it takes 5000 downloads to reduce CD sales by just a single disc. So if file-sharing was the leading cause the recording industry's misfortune, CD sales in the states would have fallen by two million copies between 2000 and 2002. In truth, they fell by 139 million.
So how do we explain that other 137 million? Just the way you'd expect: Lousy macroeconomic conditions, limited music variety, a reduction in the number of album releases, and increased competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games and DVDs. The study's findings should have proven humbling to the RIAA, which has long argued that file sharing is largely responsible for the decline in music sales. But of course it didn't. The group dismissed the study, noting that it was inconsistent with the spin of its own, ahem, scientifically rigorous studies. Said RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss: "Our own surveys show that those who are downloading more are buying less."
In other news, tobacco industry surveys show that their product is not addictive.